


In Which Lance (doesn't) Give Up

by SalParadiseLost



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Barista Lance (Voltron), Cute, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Fluff, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings, Lance (Voltron) Being Lance, M/M, One Shot, Sassy Pidge | Katie Holt, The Mysterious Mullet Guy, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 01:58:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14178069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SalParadiseLost/pseuds/SalParadiseLost
Summary: Lance is a barista and has been hitting on "Mullet" guy ever since he started coming in to the coffee shop. He's been writing his number on the cup, saying charming pick-up lines and giving the dude intense "come talk to me" eyes, but nothing works. He hasn't even been able to get the guy's name and he doesn't know how much more obvious he can get, so he's gonna take a hint and drop it. But what if Lance's attempts are not so hopeless as he thought?*Complete and very fluffy because I love coffee AU's*





	In Which Lance (doesn't) Give Up

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in the name of pure, simple fluff. Coffee also happens to be a favourite of mine.

 “What’s got you up in a funk?” Pidge asked as she slid next to Lance. The coffee shop was almost empty, the quiet only being broken by the quiet typing of a student in the back. It was mid-afternoon, after the lunchtime coffee rush, but before the time when people would trickle in after work. Lance had been leaning forward against the counter idly watching people and cars pass by.

“Nothing’s got me in funk.” He said, pushing Pidge good-naturedly with his shoulder. She scrunched her face, obviously not believing him.

“Yes, you are. You’re doing a sad-puppy face and staring at the door like a bad music video.”

He gave a breathy chuckle. “I am not. I’m just thinking.” He said without looking at her. She didn’t respond, though, and Lance could almost feel her trying to draw the answer out of him with her eyes. “Ok, fine.” He huffed, “I was thinking about the mullet guy.” He said quickly.

Immediately, she brightened and leaned in more conspiratorially like the little shit she was.    

“Oh, were you?” she hummed, “were you thinking about his pretty face or his pretty eyes or his pretty-”

“I was thinking about giving up on him.” Lance cut her off. She said quiet for another second, her eyes drilling into the side of his face.   

“What? Why would you do that, you really like him.”           

“Yeah, I do, but he’s obviously not interested, so I’m just going to give it up.”      

“Oh.” She said and Lance turned to her with an eyebrow raised.     

“Oh? That’s it. No ‘Lance you’re being an idiot.’” He said with his voice raising just a little.

“Well, I’m sorry.” She said with a shrug, “I’m shit at things like this. I don’t know how to do feelings.”

Lance laughed and pushed against her again. “That’s okay. We all can’t be as awesome as me.”

They fell into a long silence then, both momentarily lost in their own thoughts until quietly Pidge spoke. “It’s weird to see you so down like this. It’s like you two broke up, but you don’t even know his name.”

“I know. It just feels like a missed out on something that could have been great.”

 

***** 

           

Lance didn’t know when he had begun to fall in love with the mysterious, mulleted regular that came in nearly every day at 4:30. At first, it had been simple attraction, a noticing of a pretty face and dark, deep eyes that Lance lost himself in. Lance found himself waiting to see that face and having a harder and harder time suppressing his smile when it came through the door. He was somehow drawn to the other boy and gave up trying to fight the feeling. Once he gave up his fight, it was like a weight had lifted off his shoulders and Lance suddenly found himself enjoying him and his stranger’s simple exchanges.

The next thing he noticed was that the boy didn’t say much. And by much, he meant almost nothing at all. No matter which tactic he used: the smooze, the Lance charm, the simple “how have you been today?”; it was like pulling teeth trying to get more than a one-word answer out of the boy.

Every once in a while, though, Lance would manage to say something that suddenly struck and had the mullet laughing. And his laugh was the most beautiful thing Lance had seen in his entire life and something that he instantly devoted himself to. He discovered that his stranger liked conspiracy theories, extremely bad puns (the cornier, the better) and whenever Lance told an embarrassing story about himself.     

Through his sheer persistence and his wealth of childhood tales, Lance had begun to soften the boy’s eyes. Gently they shifted from the forward gaze of a stranger to something different… something that looked suspiciously like friendship.

He must have been wrong, though, he had to be. Because despite all the laughs he had gotten out of the boy and all the little smiles given, Lance didn’t even know the boy’s name. Not for lack of trying either. Lance had hinted, many, many times that he would like to hang out, get to know each other, or simply meet for coffee. Each time though, the boy didn’t react and Lance felt a little part of himself crushed. 

Three days ago, he had done the final move, too. It was the most stereotypical, tried and true move in his arsenal: he had wrote his number on mystery man’s coffee cup. He even put his name and a little heart on it for extra flair.

Nothing, though. He waited for days for a call that never came.

And Lance finally had to admit defeat.

*****

The next week passed in a sort of haze. Everything was exactly same as it usually was, everything except Lance himself. He was tired, he was hurt, and he wanted to go run and hide every time his stranger walked in through the door. Suddenly, he was jumping every time the little bell above the door tinkled and forcing cracked smiles were so obviously fake.

Pidge gave him small pitying smiles and let him inexplicitly dart into the storeroom every time the familiar mullet came into view.

Somehow, Lance thought this would work out. Like suddenly his stranger would just disappear and every would go back to normal. Of course, it didn’t.

“What do you mean he’s still here?” He hissed as Pidge ducked into the storeroom with him. She had a hand on her hip and a patented don’t-fuck-with-me face.

“Yes, he’s sitting out there. He’s been there for hours. And you know who hasn’t been out there? You. So move your ass.”

What happened to caring Pidge?

“I can’t,” he whined, crossing his arms and curling into himself. “He’ll know I’ve been avoiding him.”       

The other barista rolled her eyes. “Lance, he already knows you’ve been avoiding him. Do you really think he wouldn’t notice you leaving to go into the back every single time he came in?

“Yes?” Lance said hesitantly.

Pidge gave him a deadpan look and practically shoved him out of the storeroom. “Go out there and sell some coffee you goddamn coward.”

Lance fought valiantly, but Pidge’s little body was fuelled with an anger that could not be contested. Grumbling, he went to his post at the cash register.

For the next few hours, Lance steadily tried to keep his eyes off of the familiar mullet. He hyper-focused on the stream of consumers coming through the door, not daring to flick his vision to the right. Despite that, he couldn’t help the clenching of his stomach and the intense pull that begged him to look, just look, just one look.

Eventually the traffic flow started to slow down and their shop came to a close. Guests filtered out of the doors, usually on cell phones or hastily telling someone else when to meet next week. At closing time, the store was quiet and empty except for Lance, Pidge and the mysterious stranger.

Pidge, being the helpful friend she was, immediately ducked out. With a quick goodbye and a whispered “text me later”, she zipped out of the coffeehouse. Lance didn’t even call her out on it either, he was too busy try to keep himself from having a heart attack.

The mullet guy watched Pidge leave and once she was gone, he focussed in on Lance. Lance had never felt more like a mouse caught in a trap.

“Hello,” the other guy said with a frown.           

“Uh, hey,” Lance sputtered back, “you know we close like now.”

The guy frowned harder. “I wanted to ask if I did something wrong,” he said while uncomfortably shifting in his seat.

Lance blinked, then blinked again. His brain replayed the words over again in his head, but they still didn’t make any sense. “Why would you think you’ve done something wrong?”

“You’ve been avoiding me for days now and I don’t know why.”

“I haven’t been avoiding you.” Lance objected and he could feel a blush crawling down his neck. 

The guy’s scowl deepened and he was practically gritting his teeth at this point. “Yes, you were! You hid in the back earlier today.”

Well, Lance couldn’t exactly object to that because that was exactly what he was doing. He shifted his weight on his heels and put a hand on the back of his neck.

“Look man,” he said with a heavy sigh, “I’m sorry, but I thought we kinda had something going on, but I realise now I was wrong.” Lance looked away not wanting to see blatant rejection reflected back at him.

But instead of an angry shout, all that came from the other man was a quiet “what?”

Lance flicked eyes up, but then almost instantly stared at the ground again. “I was hitting on you, but I get it. You’re not interested, so we can go back to being costumer and barista. No harm, no foul.” He said with a nervous laugh, because he really just wanted to get this over with and go home to cry into a tub of ice cream.

“But I am interested.”

Lance’s head shot up to meet the other man’s eyes. For the second time that day, Lance’s brain short-circuited. Lance instantly wanted to say a hundred things at once but all that came out was a stuttering “Y-y-you are?” 

The mullet nodded firmly his eyes not leaving Lance’s. “It took me a while, but I figured out you were hitting on me. It was working too, but then all the sudden you just avoided me.”

Lance couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “That’s because you didn’t give me anything back!” he practically shouted with his hands flailing, “You never flirted back or called me when I wrote my number on your cup or even told me your name.”

“Keith,” the man said calmly, even though his nervous foot tapping betrayed him, “my name is Keith, and you never wrote your number on my coffee cup.”

“Yes, I did,” he muttered, letting a bit of anger filter into his voice, “I did last week and you never called me.”

Keith’s face remained blank, until all the sudden understanding washed over it and he let out a heavy groan. He put his elbows on the counter and buried his face into them. “That’s why Shiro started teasing me about you last week.”

Lance didn’t know how to respond, partly because he didn’t know who this Shiro character was, partly because he didn’t know how that had anything to do with why Keith hadn’t called.   

“Shiro’s my brother. You must have accidently written your number on his cup when I came to pick it up last week.,” Keith explained. He tilted his face up to look back at Lance. “He’s never going to let me live this down.”

Lance couldn’t help it. It started as a giggled, but then morphed into a whole-hearted, full body laugh that had his eyes watering. Beside him he heard, Keith begin to chuckle and the tiny voice filled his heart with a hope he thought he had lost.

“I guess we were both being pretty stupid.” He said finally while wiping a tear away from his eye.

“Yeah, we were.” Keith agreed with a smile,

“So let’s start again. My name is Lance and I would really love to go out with you.”

“My name is Keith, and I would love to.”


End file.
